Kitonese
The Kitonese language (officially Ki Ngok 俟言; Keoi Ki 言俟 also used) is an Austronesian language spoken by around 680,000 people, primarily in Kiton (Kiton 俟東) where it is the national language. Since 63BC, Kitonese has been written with Chinese characters (kakwep n tharun 文鄣, lit. "Chinese writing"), though its vocabulary consists of a low percentage of Chinese words in favour of Sankrit terms. The language is known to be considerably complicated and highly stratified between sociolects; topolects vary considerably little. History The history of Kitonese is largely unknown to historical linguists. While Kiton lies in the region of Austronesia in the Pacific (located near Taiwan and the Philipines), it does not belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language family. It displays some peculiar features not common to the linguistic area, such as case declensions, verb conjugations and a SOV word order, leading some to classify it as an Indo-European language, a move which has caused much controversy. The language uses Chinese characters, but does not use much modern Chinese vocabulary. This is probably due to Chinese contact in the 5th century BCE during the end Zhou period, leading to the absorption of Chinese characters as a new form of writing, although the Chinese characters they did accept were an archaic and dialectal form of Ancient Chinese. This explains, for example, the word 社會 (lit. gathering of shrines) does not mean "society" unlike most Sinoxenic languages, as link was not drawn during the brief period of Chinese contact. The language known today as Kitonese was the local dialect of Akelaksa (keoi n ake laksa 言域焦), the ancient capital of Kiton. When King Sengyan (Kimaita Sengyan 王成寅) moved his capital to Akelaksa, he declared the local dialect as the national language. To this day, Kitonese is widely used and universally understood in the Kingdom. While Kitonese is the official language in all states of Kiton, the State of Ailongeng'ai uses the local Sari'iki language as the official state language, which is unrelated to Kitonese. Phonology Orthography Below is the Kitonese alphabet: Vowels: a e i o u Onset consonants: b, by, ch, d, f, g, gw, h, j, k, kw, l, m, n, ng, ny, p, py, r, s, sh, t, w, y Coda consonants: k, n Pronunciation Vowels The standard uses five vowels for writing, although there are actually over 10 of vowels used in the Akelaksa dialect of Kitonese: *a; a'' *ai; ''ahi, aei *au; ahu *e; e, ae, ei *ae; ai *i; i'' *iu; ''iu, ieu *io; aeo, io *o; o, ou *oi (err-ee, not in English); oi *or; au, eo, '' *oi (as in boy); ''aeoi, aeui, eoi *u; u Grammar Pronouns Formal Informal Nouns Nouns such in Kitonese are not marked for definiteness but are marked for case. *Nominative: 天 saurata *Accusative: 天 saurata *Genitive A: 天 - n saurata *Genitive B: 奚天 - saurata ngun *Genitive C: 矣天 - saurata gi *Dative: 至天 saurata ya *Locative: 於天 saurata i *Instrumental: 以天 saurata hoi *Ablative: 自天 saurata eoi *Vocative Formal: 咨天 saurata yanek *Vocative Colloquial: 兮天 he saurata The nominative, accusative and genitive A case do not have any case markers in the written language although standard practice dictates that the subject of a sentence be followed by a space. Vocabulary